Can Rocketship Launch a Fleet of Successful, Mass-Produced Schools?

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5. I saw that particular program segment recently.

I have multiple major problems with this school model.

1. The creator has a background in business, not education, and has only three years of teaching experience. Truly successful schools are not run like businesses, and three years of teaching experience typically doesn't qualify anyone to run one school, much less multiple schools.

2. This school model is over reliant on automated, self-teaching via computerized games with insufficient guidance and adult supervision. In addition, students' classroom teachers do not receive data related to students' progress in their online learning games. Therefore, their teachers cannot correlate what occurs in the classroom with the gaming.

3. Students are not given opportunities to study music or art. Music and art compliment cognitive growth and provide for career opportunities later in life and simply make humans happier. Denying students the opportunity to study these subjects deprives them of cognitive and affective growth.

4. Their understanding of differentiated instruction is flawed. They see differentiation as allowing students to move at different paces through a prescribed set and order of levels and concepts in computerized learning gaming. This is NOT adequate differentiation. Differentiation is so much more complex than this business allows for. Please see http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/what-differentiated-instruction for more information on differentiation if you're interested.

In my opinion, we need to stop taking the attitude that our public education system is broken so it needs to be replaced as a whole. There are many, many terrific things public schools do that we can build upon. There is no need to throw out all of the work and development public schools have done.